Driven by burgeoning ecotourism and military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, a parasitic infection called leishmaniasis is showing up in more U.S. patients, often stumping doctors. Rapid diagnostic tests and innovative ...

Some of the roughly 1 million cases a year of the parasitic disease leishmaniasis don't fit with the standard definition of the disease—the patients have unusual symptoms and front-line medicines don't work. Now, researchers ...

Researchers from the University of Toronto have discovered that mice infected with the common gut parasite Tritrichomonas muris are at an increased risk of developing inflammatory colitis. Their findings, which have been ...

A vaccine against cutaneous leishmaniasis, a skin infection caused by Leishmania parasites, may be spitting distance away—sand fly spit, that is. Saliva from a species of the fly responsible for transmitting leishmaniasis ...

An international collaborative of researchers has identified a mechanism that allows the leishmania parasite, which causes leishmaniasis, to evade the immune system and thereby produce infection. The study, published in Immunity, ...

A newly identified method of activating drugs to combat one of the world's most destructive `neglected' diseases could lead to better medicines according to new research led by the University of Dundee.

(Medical Xpress) -- A study published yesterday shows that a drug called fexinidazole could potentially be used to treat visceral leishmaniasis, a parasitic disease that kills 50 000 to 60 000 people a year in Africa, ...

The first clinical trial of a new vaccine for visceral leishmaniasis (VL) has been launched by the Infectious Disease Research Institute (IDRI), a Seattle-based nonprofit that develops products to prevent, detect, and treat ...

(Medical Xpress)—Every year, visceral leishmaniasis infects about 500,000 people and kills about 41,000. Most deaths occur in India's Bihar region, where there is a high level of resistance to the antimony compounds used ...

A study shows that stimulating the production of interleukin-17A (IL-17A), one of the cytokines released by cells of the immune system, can be an effective strategy for the treatment of visceral leishmaniasis, considered ...

A drug that has already been approved for treatment of tuberculosis could also be a powerful tool to combat another of the developing world's major diseases, researchers at the University of Dundee have found.

A research executed in the Autonomous University of Yucatan (UADY) has successfully proved, in test animals, the effectiveness of a vaccine that immunizes the organism against leishmaniasis, an ailment transmitted through ...

An international team of scientists, with the participation of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, have developed a compound to treat leishmaniasis in humans using today's most commonly prescribed drug, but with an 83 ...

Visceral leishmaniasis is the second-deadliest parasitic disease after malaria. Each year, thousands fall victim among poor and marginalised populations in low-income countries. Filip Meheus is the first to detail the economic ...

With an estimated 500,000 human infections and 50,000 deaths annually, visceral leishmaniasis (VL) is the second most prevalent parasitic killer, behind malaria. Leishmania parasites are transmitted through the bite of phlebotomine ...

Leishmaniasis is a disease caused by protozoan parasites that belong to the genus Leishmania and is transmitted by the bite of certain species of sand fly (subfamily Phlebotominae). Although the majority of the literature mentions only one genus transmitting Leishmania to humans (Lutzomyia) in the Americas, a 2003 study by Galati suggested a new classification for the New World sand flies, elevating several subgenera to the genus level. Elsewhere in the world, the genus Phlebotomus is considered the vector of leishmaniasis.

Most forms of the disease are transmissible only from animals (zoonosis), but some can be spread between humans. Human infection is caused by about 21 of 30 species that infect mammals. These include the L. donovani complex with three species (L. donovani, L. infantum, and L. chagasi); the L. mexicana complex with four main species (L. mexicana, L. amazonensis, and L. venezuelensis); L. tropica; L. major; L. aethiopica; and the subgenus Viannia with four main species (L. (V.) braziliensis, L. (V.) guyanensis, L. (V.) panamensis, and L. (V.) peruviana). The different species are morphologically indistinguishable, but they can be differentiated by isoenzyme analysis, DNA sequence analysis, or monoclonal antibodies.

Cutaneous leishmaniasis is the most common form of leishmaniasis. Visceral leishmaniasis is a severe form in which the parasites have migrated to the vital organs.

Latest Spotlight News

Short telomeres—the protective caps on the ends of chromosomes—have been previously linked to increased risk of death from heart disease. Now, research by scientists at UC San Francisco and the Veterans Affairs Medical ...

An achievement by UCLA neuroscientists could lead to a better understanding of astrocytes, a type of cell in the brain that is thought to play a role in Lou Gehrig's disease, also called amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ...

An international team of researchers involving the University of Adelaide is tackling the controversy over what some scientists consider to be a "harmful" hormone, arguing that it could be a game changer in the fight against ...

Breast cancer cells break away and spread to other parts of the body relatively late on in breast tumour development, an international team of scientists has shown. The research, jointly led by Dr Peter Van Loo at the Francis ...

Discovered in the 1970s, tumor suppressors are among the most important proteins in the body. A master regulator of growth—"the guardian of the genome"—the p53 protein monitors cell growth for errors. We rely on suppressors ...